"Ethan Carlien," said a young man who Lorelle noticed had been glaring at him for a while now.
Great. I just keep piling up enemies and I'm not even strong enough to defend myself.
He clicked his tongue in frustration, fully aware of how bad his situation was. His chances of surviving even before the grading exams were slim to none, given how many people already wanted him dead.
"Arton Urien," said the next student, and Lorelle's thoughts began to drift.
He found himself wondering, what if he just got close to the protagonist?
No, that wasn't going to work. The protagonist would eventually meet the other heroines, most of whom would happily trade a limb for a chance to kill him. So the protagonist was completely off the table. There was also the risk that someone would fill him in on Lorelle's past, and then the protagonist might come after him himself in some misguided attempt at justice.
That left two real options.
The first was side characters, the ones who didn't seem important at first but eventually became major assets and ended up as key allies of the protagonist. If he could get close to those people, they might be able to offer him some protection down the line.
But even that felt like a stretch, because no matter how strong those allies were, it was only a matter of time before the heroines found a way to get to him.
The second option was getting close to the villainesses, who were on a completely different level of power.
He thought about Rizel, then immediately felt uneasy about it. What if, for some completely messed up reason, he became the thing she got fixated on? She was already far more powerful than him, and as a villainess she was only going to keep growing stronger. If she got obsessed with him the way the novel described, she could chain him up somewhere and there'd be nothing he could do about it.
Rizel was definitely off the list.
He thought about Liliana next, then nearly shook his head at himself for even going there. There was a real chance she'd turn him into some kind of love slave using her bloodline, and he'd lose himself completely and spend the rest of his days doing whatever she wanted. And if she somehow fell for him or reached the same level of obsession Rizel was capable of, there'd be no escaping her. She literally manipulated emotions, so that would be the end of his sanity entirely.
Liliana was off the list too.
He considered Scarlet, but the more he thought about it the more pointless it seemed. The novel made it clear she was deeply in love with Micheal, so the chances of changing that were basically nonexistent.
There are others though. Maybe Selena.
He let his gaze drift across the enormous classroom, but the room was just too big and there were too many people to easily pick out one specific person.
Or at least, that's what he expected, but after scanning the room for a moment he spotted a girl looking directly at him with a smile on her face that, for reasons he couldn't immediately explain, scared him.
"What the hell," he muttered.
It was only then that he noticed how many girls had been stealing glances at him, some of them practically flirting with him from across the room.
What is going on? Wait, am I considered good-looking here?
He shook his head after a moment. He couldn't be sure they were all looking at him specifically, maybe his eyes were playing tricks. He'd never been the type to think much about what others thought of his appearance, so it had never really crossed his mind that he might be considered attractive. Maybe it was just some leftover perception from his past life messing with him.
But none of that explained Selena, a confirmed villainess and the cause of countless deaths in the story to come, looking at him with what could only be described as a dreamy expression. The moment their eyes met she looked away, but after a few seconds she looked back, and since he hadn't stopped watching her their eyes kept meeting and she kept pulling her gaze away each time.
Something is definitely off here. Have I met her before?
Nothing was coming to mind. For the past three years his focus had been almost entirely on finding his lover, and he couldn't remember crossing paths with anyone matching her description along the way. So why was she looking at him like she already knew him?